SOURCE: "Natural History and the Eighteenth-Century Novel," Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter, 1991-1992, pp. 145-70.

In the following essay, Merrett analyzes the interrelated nature of the eighteenth-century passions for the study of natural history and for novel-reading and -writing.

In a compelling bibliographical examination of natural history's rise to a popularity rivaling the novel's by the end of the eighteenth century, G. S. Rousseau demonstrates the genre's broad social appeal and stresses its impact on the English language.¹ In applying this genre's popularity and linguistic power to the history of eighteenth-century novels, Serge Soupel stresses the involvement of scientific and literary language: he argues that, if scientific words informed fictional procedures, poetic diction predetermined scientific expression because natural philosophers forewent neither "genteel vocabulary" nor tropes but personified natural objects. Soupel's sense of the reciprocity of literary and scientific diction challenges literary history's equation of science with the...